ALL RELIGIOUS STRUCTURES
WERE BUILT TO RESEMBLE THE BODY OF A WOMAN.
- ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN
Through a thicket of antlered branches,
an upright oval, opal-edged,
twin-pointed vesica piscis,
Vessel of the Fish, Goddess symbol:
Kali, Aphrodite, Isis, Freya,
Sheila na gig, vulva woman
whose well-worn cunt was pressed
near the cathedral door
by myriad medieval fingers licked for luck.
It is a tunnel, a cave, a yoni, a church;
the place through which you come and go;
first pushing yourself through
the hot, wet folds of the vestibule:
labia minora, labia majora;
falling naked into the cold, clear morning light
of your body and the arms of those
who will touch your small light with their own.
Midway it is your healing center,
your Church of the Plowed Earth,
the vaulted door opening you
to pleasure and pain: baptism
of blood, sacrament of birth,
wedding of the light illuminating
your noontime neurons, altar
on which you sacrifice yourself
to the rising of the Goddess moon.
It is the farthest step forward,
the penultimate passage, rising
toward the gold at the end of the vein,
the dazzled light of leaving, falling
away from your bodys holy mourning
into the arms of those who have gone before,
light dissolving into light;
It is the evening place to which you return. |
